On Mon, 24 Apr 2006 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > (Sample question: How can I be sure that such-and-so-image of the > > Madonna and Child isn't really Mary Magdalen and her baby by Jesus?) > > Sample answer - what difference does it make when you're > discussing the clothing? I'm guessing your lecture is to help sort > out the real clothing of the time period vs. the icons or identifiers > of the saints that were not "real" clothes. Once I figured that out I > stopped carrying around the dish of eyeballs at SCA events.
Actually, it does matter how you identify a saint, because certain elements (but not all) are typically symbolic for certain saints, and they're not always the same ones. The question of "real vs. unreal" images is only the beginning -- the next issue is whether any elements of the "unreal" images can be useful in costume research, and if so, how you can use them and what safeguards you need to apply. But, um, that's a whole lecture just to give a taste of this. Anyway, Magdalen often has some of the coolest clothing around, and Mary has a very specific wardrobe, and the two of them together account for probably a majority of female religious images in the Middle Ages, so it's important to distinguish which one is which! And working in the other direction, often the clothing is part of our clue to identification. This is a large part of that lecture. So part of my answer to someone who wants to try to read an image of Mary as being Magdalen has to do with how we use the clothing symbols to make the distinction ... and in this case, the questioner wondered whether the artist was using the clothing either to mask the real identity of the woman in the portrait, or else to provide clues to it. So you see, it did directly relate to costume study, and to my lecture topic. But it's a question that I never would have had to address if some people didn't have it in their heads that there was a conspiracy in the period to hide a whole community of people following a different religious truth. I rather wish that Dan Brown had picked a saint who wasn't quite so central to costume study. Say, Mary of Egypt. --Robin _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
